De Blowitz

Just 100 years ago a babe with an enormous head and wide, staring eyes was born at the Chateau de Blowitz, near Pilsen, Bohemia. Half a century later one Henri Stephan de Blowitz, jack of all trades, paunchy ne'er-do-well, sought the Paris office of the famed London Times and audaciously asked for a job, although he admitted that he had never written a line of news in all his wastrel life.

He was given a fortnight's trial. Everyone laughed at his huge head, his flamboyant whiskers, his enormous white cravat--at what was later called his "Blowitzerie."

His fortnight's trial with the Times lengthened into 30 years. Almost at once he leaped into the first rank of correspondents by his incredible power of wheedling secrets out of whoever happened to know them. If only the gods knew, it seemed as if they whispered to De Blowitz. As a tribute to his genius, the Times placed at his disposal the first exclusive cable wire ever leased by a newspaper. To this day the "beats" which he scored are unrivaled.

In 1878 Bismarck was extremely anxious that the text of the Treaty of Berlin should remain secret until the last possible moment. Months in advance De Blowitz had set to work to gain an ascendancy over one of the Iron Chancellor's secretaries. The secretary placed the information which De Blowitz desired in the lining of his own hat, and each day the rotund correspondent sought and found what he wanted in the dark checkroom of the restaurant at which he and the secretary dined--carefully apart. It is history that the Times secured a "beat" over every other newspaper in the world by printing the Treaty of Berlin on the very day when it was signed.

Such exploits rightly call for commemoration. A fortnight ago the London Times devoted two columns to an article celebrating the 100th anniversary of De Blowitz's birth.